


Teaspoons and Jam Biscuits

by KerrAvonsen



Series: Teaspoons and Jam Biscuits [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2005-12-16
Updated: 2008-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KerrAvonsen/pseuds/KerrAvonsen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of time and space. So many lives touched. Here are various vigniettes and drabbles set in the "Doctor Who" universe, collected for your pleasure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From The Reading Of A Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blair Sandburg meets a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Universe:** Sentinel/Doctor Who  
> **Characters:** Blair Sandburg, 7th Doctor  
> **Challenge:** crossovers100  
> **Claim:** Doctor Who  
> **Prompt:** 'square'

A voice with a soft Scottish accent interrupted Blair's perusal of the bookshelf. "I believe this is the book you're looking for, Mr. Sandburg."

Blair looked up. "Excuse me? Do I know you?"

The man smiled and doffed his hat. "Not exactly."

Then Blair's attention was caught by the book that the man held towards him. Large, heavy, leatherbound, the title glinted in gold leaf on the cover:

_The Sentinels of Paraguay_   
_by Richard Burton_

"I wasn't looking for this," Blair said, finding himself holding it anyway.

"Nevertheless, it's the book for you," the man said, steering him towards a table.

Blair opened it carefully; it was either a very good facsimile, or an incredibly well-preserved original. He was fascinated in spite of himself. "Amazing."

"It's yours."

"What? It has to be worth-"

"It's yours," the man repeated.

"Thanks," he said. "Why me?"

"I'm interested in the preservation of history."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from this quote:
> 
> "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."  
> \- Henry David Thoreau


	2. Narcissus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After they left New Earth, everything was fine - wasn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Spoilers:** all of New Who season 2

When a thought whispers in your mind, you assume that it is your own, especially when it is not so very different from the way you think, from the way you used to think. When water washes away mud, it carries the mud with it.

The Doctor had been affected too, but he threw it off more quickly. Cassandra fit less well in the crevices of his mind; because he was male, because he was alien, because he was old. Most importantly, he knew how to deal with the echoes of other minds.

Rose could not distinguish the shadow from the self.

If someone had pointed out Rose's odd behaviour, she would have laughed. She wasn't anything like Cassandra, obsessed with her appearance (but being obsessed about the Doctor was perfectly normal). She didn't think of people as objects (but winding up Queen Victoria, what a lark!). She didn't think she was above the common herd (but she was so special, because the Doctor had picked _her_). She didn't think the universe revolved around her (but how could Mickey leave? How could her father disown her? How could the Doctor make her stay behind?)

Alas, saddest of all, nobody noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this because I loathed the giggly way the Doctor and Rose behaved in "Tooth and Claw" and was disgusted at the way Rose's character degenerated this season; and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps there was an in-universe explanation...


	3. A Million Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Romana looks at the sky.

The skies were different here. Darker, emptier. It wasn't the dimness of light-pollution, which she'd seen in so many places, from London to Trantor. And it wasn't the sparseness of worlds on galaxy-rim; even out there, one could feel the ripples cast into time by a million suns. Here, those stars simply weren't there.

It wasn't until Romana looked at the skies that she really felt how small E-Space was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LizBee wanted some Romana fic to cheer her up, so I wrote this very quickly, using the "title of the next song on your random play" as the prompt ("A Million Stars" by Enya).


	4. Beyond The End Of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It will be like magic to them -- but then, it always was, wasn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Challenge:** structuralism challenge #2 "future tense"

It will be like magic to them - but then, it always was, wasn't it? So alien you will be, with a mind formed by different nature, different laws. As they swim through their aether, how could they comprehend what you were? Loneliness will be second nature to you by then. Second nature, indeed. The natural laws of the next universe will drive you to the edge of insanity, but you will weather it. Are you less than Yog-Sothoth or Saraquazel?

You will guide them in their firefly lives, so bright, so short. You will be just, and your vengeance will be terrible.

You will truly be the Lonely God.

They will worship you, and it will never be enough. Others will arise, the new overthrowing the old, and growing old and calcified in their turn. You will emerge again, and spawn a thousand heresies in your wake. You will be banished, but you will never die. It will be far, far too late for death by then. Like Omega you will be, mind without body, for only mind can survive the death of universes. You will be spoken of in whispers, sought out, brought back by arcane mysteries.

You will grow weary, so weary. Sleep will be your only solace. You will strike down those who wake you, for their presumption at disturbing your rest. Your name will be anathema, your time declared an age of darkness. You will be sought by those of evil intent, and they will die.

One day, you will be woken by a child's cry. Her sorrow will touch you, and remind you of those gone long before, of how you loved them. You will weep for what was lost, and remember that long before you were the Lonely God, long before you were the Oncoming Storm, you were the Doctor.

One who heals. One who learns.

You will sing to her a song you sang, many aeons ago, to your granddaughter. The child will hear you. Her body will glow with the colours of wonder. She will sing back to you, songs of her own, new songs. For as long as there are singers, there will be new songs.

You will recall what you had forgotten in all the death, the evil and the hatred, in all the things you fought against; the one thing, the most important thing of all.

Love never ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Missing Adventures novel "Millennial Rites" by Craig Hinton is where Saraquazel comes from (and it also features Yog-Sothoth, but that being first appeared in the 2nd Doctor adventure "The Abominable Snowmen", though I don't recall that it was given any name there other than The Great Intelligence).


	5. Frozen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing scene from Utopia. What goes through the Doctor's mind when he looks at Jack?

The sky was empty, with a hollow blind vacancy. "This isn't just night," the Doctor said. "All the stars have burnt up and faded away... into nothing."

"They must have an atmospheric shell," Jack surmised. "We should be frozen to death."

"Well, Martha and I, maybe," the Doctor replied, eyes still scanning the blackness. "I'm not so sure about _you_, Jack." The Doctor turned his head, staring at the Captain.

Their eyes locked. But seeing wasn't believing. The senses that screamed _wrongness_ to the Doctor weren't his eyes. To his eyes, Jack looked the same as he ever had; dashing smile, handsome as a Hollywood superstar, even that anachronisic coat of his. Exactly the same. And that was the problem. Frozen as he was at the moment of his death, Jack would never change, never grow, never die. To the Doctor's time-senses, it was like looking at a zombie; an unnatural necromancy. Time was stagnant in Jack; there was no line of life, no branching of possibilities, just a tangled knot of nothing, looping back on itself. Even _vampires_ were more alive to Time than Jack was.

No wonder the TARDIS had flinched.

But he himself, what would he do?


	6. Metamorphobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some would be inspired. Some would run away. And some would go mad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Characters:** First Doctor  
> Inspired by a remark the Doctor made in "Fires of Pompeii", plus additional things mentioned about his childhood in "The Sound of Drums" and "The Time Monster".

When he was eight, he ran away. The raw chaos of the Untempered Schism had scared him more than anything he'd ever seen in his short life. It was necessary, they said, to be exposed to raw time to ensure that the newly inserted symbiotic nuclei were activated correctly. Didn't stop them from making a huge ceremony of it, though. A test of the mind, as well as science.

At least he didn't go mad, but that was small consolation. He didn't want to stay there a day or a moment longer. So he ran away. It wasn't that difficult for someone ingenious to get out of the Citadel. But once he was out, he wasn't really sure where to go. He'd had a vague idea of trying to join a band of outsiders, but if the hermit hadn't found him, he'd probably have died falling off a cliff.

The hermit didn't just save his life, he probably saved his sanity. Here was a Time Lord who wasn't afraid of time, who wasn't shut up in the Citadel, away from change, who wasn't stuffy and sterile and buried in dust. The hermit showed him how to rejoice in his time senses; to watch a butterfly grow, to feel the turn of Gallifrey below them, and the wheel of the stars above.

"A wise man does not fear change," the hermit said. He waved his hand at the silver tree that they were sitting under. "For without change, one cannot grow, and a tree that does not grow is dead." It wasn't until many years later that he wondered whether the hermit had been referring to Time Lord society, and not just himself. For those who could see what was, what could be and what will be, they would loathe change like a human would loathe sea-sickness.

But he was just a boy, and did not think deep thoughts, not then. Soon enough he left the hermit and went back to the Academy. But not forever. For the Citadel was built of unchanging stone, and he himself, he rather liked trees.


End file.
